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Great speaker sounds terrible in my room?

So today I took a ride to demo a set of speakers that has had my interest for quite some time, the Ref 3A Royal Virtuoso. These things are completely overbuilt, top notch parts and built like tombstones, the cabinets are made of Corian and are completely inert. They sounded excellent during the demo. The owner was running them with a beautiful VAC preamp / Pass labs amp and a Moon Dac-streamer. They were on 24” stands and approximately 2ft off the back wall. They sounded superb as expected…I pack em up, take em home. I rig them up…my setup is near field with the speakers 10ft off the front wall and the speakers are 5ft away from my listening position. I fire them up and….shocker. They got nothing. They literally were lost with Zero bass response. I actually thought maybe something was connected wrong…I checked the connections ( more on that in a minute) all good. These are higher efficiency (91db) than my ProAc Response D2’s (88db) yet the Ref 3A’s sounded much lower at my usual listening level. I’m still scratching my head over how this speaker is unable to kick ass. I have decent gear with plenty of firepower (ARC D400MKII amp, Levinson 380s Pre, Denafrips Terminator Dac, Aurender N100SC streamer. I’ve had Sonus Farber Concertino’s, Vienna Acoustics Haydn, KEF 150’s and my ProAcs all set up in the same manner and they all were excellent performers. The one thing that I’m wondering about is the Binding post on the Ref 3A…it uses the Cardas screw down clamp type post that only accepts spades or bare wire. my cables are banana terminated and I was using cheapo adapters. Could this all could be a connection related issue or just a speaker/room mismatch?

Thoughts / comments are much appreciated

 

jl1ny

Showing 1 response by pinthrift

pinthrift
210 posts
 

(Pinthrift girds his loins before posting this)

I've decided to risk the flac that will surely be coming, however, if it helps one music lover during these trying times, so be it.  

My studio is beneath our bedroom and my wife turns in early, during my "prime-time" late night listening.  Lately, my system has been sizzling, at optimal performance.  The better things get, the more I'm drawn to classical, choral and smaller jazz ensembles, often with large dynamic swings in the music, especially with classical.  After my wife is asleep, I can often get away with around 70 decibels.  This is still frustrating with softer classical passages, often losing my interest along the way.  

So, this has provided a nice solution, not perfect, but satisfactory for late night:  https://wwwearglasses.com

...do I feel silly with them on, sure!  Are they comfortable and do they work, sure!  Check the science page.  Yes, there is loss, but at age 75, for their purpose, gains override the loss.  Having the benefit of great electricity here, I still have all day for peak listening. 

Okay, having risked ALL credibility in this Forum now, wishing you More Peace.  Think Positive / Test Negative.  Use laser ruler for setup!  Pin

 

 

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